


November

by Xairathan



Series: Fate/TTRPG [4]
Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: F/F, Fate/TTRPG-verse, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25630174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xairathan/pseuds/Xairathan
Summary: This is the way Jeanne Alter prefers it. Memories smeared grey with ash, streaked with soot. Flames that leap between buildings and passing days, chasing after something that continues to slip through her fingers like smoke, tearing through the city as if they are as insatiable as Jeanne Alter herself--and in Chaldea, it is November.
Relationships: Jeanne d'Arc Alter | Avenger/Nagao Kagetora | Lancer
Series: Fate/TTRPG [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1857889
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	November

**Author's Note:**

> As promised here is my extended and reworked version of "November". Events are written with an assumption that the reader is familiar with Kagetora and Jalter's plotlines (tl;dr this was written for my group's Fate/TTRPG campaign).
> 
> In short, Kagetora is a Chaldean Servant and Jalter managed to survive Orleans via mysterious intervention and ended up in Shinjuku. The Counterfeits event never happened. A reunion is totally not overdue and this is totally not the lead-up to it.
> 
> This also kinda doubles into an exploration of Kagetora and the Lahmu because I maintain that if those two ever met Kagetora would be so unnerved by what's essentially the monstrous version of "smile and fight" realized.

Another Singularity, another battle. For once, an obstacle impassable even to the god of war. A hundred tons of pristine marble coming down upon her, and her Master caught in its path.

White robes and white dust, the prelude to the deluge of stone to follow. Kagetora’s instincts, sharp as her blades, turn her around upon feet otherwise too stunned to move. Not once had the god of war let any sight nor thought stun her, and even death had to ambush her in a rare unguarded moment. It couldn’t have so easily taken her otherwise.

Death is here before her now, glistening in the broad daylight. Its eyes are not for her, but for the diminutive Master that she calls her charge, standing frozen beneath its shadow. Her movement is seamless, thoughtless. Her Master’s arm is firm against her fingers, her weight an afterthought. Kagetora flings Pan out to the side, shouting to be heard over the thunder around her- “Take her!”

She sees the other Master fumble with their gun as Pan knocks against their body. _She’s safe,_ Kagetora thinks, just as a shadow eclipses her outstretched hand. Stale air around her, more grey than clear. The scent of moisture long trapped in the rocks making a bid for the open sky. This sudden darkness transports her, as disorienting as any Rayshift.

This could be Camelot; this could be some land far from here, two hundred years in the future, half a year in the past. The remnants of the falling tower plummet around her, familiar vibrations trembling through the space around her. In this void, white marble could just as easily be worn granite, the disappearing sun a ball of flame held out in an upturned hand.

Some of this is the same. Immense weight crushing her limbs, her chest. The only difference is that of magnitude: no one will be excavating her from this makeshift mausoleum. A Servant’s body is made to dissipate as easily as to endure, neither degree necessarily the right one.

She could linger. She could squint through the fuzzy black and settling dust. Perhaps she would be wrong, and there would be a pinprick of light to blind her with a greeting. That too would be familiar, and unbearably different. None of the Chaldean Masters or Servants are who Kagetora would expect to (hope to) see, and so there’s no point in staying. Better to go into Spiritron Form and let Pan reconstitute her once the fighting has settled. Better this than to cling to a vision with no hope of being realized. So she lets go- or says, once again, that she does.

* * *

She wakes up with her cheek scratching on uneven pavement and a hundred nonsense memories weaving stories in her mind. A cylindrical field of stars; three voices turning into four blurring into one. An agreement, the specifics of which linger beyond her grasp. Only one thing stands out clearly in her mind, words that burn as much over her skin as beneath them-

_I want to live._

Above and around her, the skyscrapers of a starless city sprawl like walls of a labyrinth. Of course she would wake to something like this. Since when has anything Jeanne Alter wanted ever been simple? Her thirst for vengeance earned her the name of _Dragon Witch_ ; her pride, the turned back of her lieutenant and creator, and her desire to kill him had led to her bleeding out in the halls of some ruined castle, too weak to raise even a finger in contempt.

For such a place awash with light, the city is eerily quiet. In the distance roars the plaintive cry of a motorbike and its restless rider. Around her lay the abandoned remnants of a hundred separate lives, undistinguishable to any but another of their kind. Freshly discarded food trash, a bag half-stuffed with clothes spilled open in the alleyway, as if thrown there and instantly forgotten. A thin sheen of liquid mirrors the dying gasps of the light at the end of the alley: evening dew, undisturbed by so much as a breeze or a passing animal.

It’s ugly work, digging through the black plastic bag, but a necessary one. Bloodstained armor and a smoldering hole in her breastplate will get Jeanne Alter more looks and trouble than even her dignity is worth. But she’s got to keep some of it- so it’s good that no one bothers to investigate, that the only suggestion of fire is the scent of stale smoke lingering on the clothes in her hands. A blouse, a jacket- they’ll suit her fine.

But after that- then what? All Jeanne Alter knows of waking in unfamiliar places is Gilles’ leering face, hatred and fire alike singing in her veins. His laughter as he explained her purpose, the reason for her being. As if she would ever let herself be used so easily ever again.

In the back of her mind, quick and leaping like a spark, a memory. A smile, pulled thin and strained, the last thing she remembers before her vision turned to stars. She pushes the thought away. No- that’s something decidedly for later, when Jeanne Alter isn’t crouching in an alleyway anymore, disoriented and in the open.

Something’s tottering around the corner, drawn by the sounds of Jeanne Alter’s rummaging. A pair of them- humanoid, but their footfalls too heavy to be human. Their skin bruise-purple, arms lanky and too long: metal dolls with featureless faces. Like the soldiers she’d burned, hundreds upon thousands of indistinct men, marching mindlessly to their doom.

For the first time, this familiarity is a comfortable one. These memories aren’t filled with giddy laughter or too-wide smiles, just fire and twisted metal. The balanced weight of her sword in hand. Cutting through metal and flesh, armor and soldier.

Jeanne Alter’s on her feet, halfway down the alley. Fire dances from her hands, covers her fingertips, the length of her sword. Fresh smoke surrounds her, envelops her, clots the night with billowing black. The city’s just a little less unnerving like this, a little more natural- as if this is how it’s supposed to be. Filled with the clash of steel on steel, the shriek of rending metal, the laughter of the Dragon Witch as she gives herself over to the only thing in this city she knows: a death by fire that does not know her.

* * *

Alone now in the halls of Chaldea, released from a gathering of the Masters and words that held no meaning for her. Her own Master is well and unhurt, and there are other things to occupy her thoughts with- conflicts put on hold until the completion of the Grand Order. The barrel of Zinon’s gun aimed at Pan’s head. Pan’s Gandr pointed at their chest.

Should it have been her that asked Pan if she was alright, and not the other way around? As many questions from the past plague Kagetora as uncertainties of the future. Brushing off her Master’s concern was as natural to her as the aimless route she charts through Chaldea. As easy as putting on a smile that gets heavier to wear with every Singularity she returns from. It will never be too much for her- that she knows. It is her burden to bear, hers as the avatar of Bishamonten.

But there is the question that plagues her most, one she has no answer to. Only the darkness she returned from could tell her if she had smiled within its empty grasp, whiling away the eternal seconds between consciousness and the unbreachable void. For all the times she’s visited that nameless place, she never knows any more than when she’d entered it. It must be some limbo, she thinks, between the Throne of Heroes and wherever her Master is.

Or it could be a thousand memories, given form. She’s heard Oda mention her place of retreat in passing. Hers is smoke and restless orange, Honnouji or the battlefield, some dog-eared page from Oda’s life. What would it say, then, that her waystation is an endless expanse of nothingness? That she and Oda have one at all? What of those Servants who had no Master, only the Throne to return to? And of those who had dissolved into that golden light, there was still one among them that had nowhere to go, and no one to remember her.

Pure white halls and bright fluorescent lights. Reminders that she’s returned from that dark sea. Cool metal walls gliding beneath her fingertips. The metal floor rings against her sandals with every step. This is the proof that Kagetora unknowingly seeks every time she comes back from the brink. The avatar of Bishamonten needs no companionship nor conversation to be fulfilled, but still she can’t deny that something about this place reassures her. Quells a fluttering in her chest that seems only distantly familiar to her, as if something felt in a dream. But such a dream, if it existed, would have been of _Torachiyo_ and not _Kagetora_ , populated by a girl to whom her only connection was their shared blood.

What had been in the darkness that had taken the Dragon Witch? Another question, and one she should not dare to consider. There could only be so many answers, and even fewer that would satisfy her. As it is, it’s none of her concern. Shouldn’t be. Is, anyway, because it’s not too much of a stretch to think that with so much common ground between them, with the circumstances of her creation, the Dragon Witch might not have been so different-

“Lancer?”

A blur of brown in a haze of white and silver. Kagetora blinks, and there before her is her Master. Pan stares at her, gaze upturned, brow bent in worry. “Lancer,” she says. “Are you alright?”

“You’ve already asked me this before, Master,” Kagetora replies. There is no impatience in her voice. It’s measured, as it always is. As it will always be. As it should’ve been, in the one moment in which she’d wavered, and nearly felt everything else crack along with it. “I appreciate your concern, but it is unwarranted. I am perfectly fine, Master, of that I can reassure you.”

“Mmm… are you sure?” Pan tilts her head, stands on her tiptoes to peer closer. “You… seemed distracted back there, in the Rayshift room…”

“If I appeared so, it is likely because I just had a building dropped on my head.” Kagetora’s smile thins, if only for Pan’s benefit. Let Pan see that it perturbs her, because that is what humans need to understand each other- they read one another’s faces. “I have also just re-materialized. I will be ready when it comes to depart for the next Singularity, so please don’t concern yourself with me, Master. You should be resting, shouldn’t you?”

“I guess…” Pan’s eyes dart down the hall, past Kagetora’s shoulder. Of course. The kitchen. Where else would Pan want to run off to? “Well, if you’re sure, then I guess I’ll trust you, Lancer.” She beams- a smile so wide that it almost hurts to look at. A side effect of having just returned from spirit form, she’s sure. Something to do with the brightness of the lights glinting off her teeth.

“Will that be all, Master?”

Pan doesn’t reply immediately, doesn’t move away. Her gaze scrutinizes Kagetora for an unnervingly long time- what should be unnerving to Pan. It is not, though, for the same reason that Kagetora fails to find it unusual. This is her new normal, now. A Master not so jaded yet as to fully understand who, or what, she commands. A team of humans peculiar enough to not to flinch when they glance in Kagetora’s direction.

At last Pan rocks back onto her heels, apparently satisfied. “I’m making cheesecake, Lancer,” she says, as if nothing out of the ordinary has just occurred. To her, perhaps nothing has. “Do you want me to bring you some?”

“I am a Servant, Master,” Kagetora reminds her. “I do not need to eat as you do.”

“Are you sure? It’s gonna be good. I’ll make sure to put actual cream cheese in it and not lemon curd, like I’m going to do for Zinon, ahaha…”

“Please try not to antagonize the other Master beyond what you’ve already done,” she sighs. “I feel like it would be counterproductive, given the circumstances.”

“I already agreed not to kill them, isn’t that enough?”

“As I am the god of war, I do not think it’s prudent for you to ask me that question.” Kagetora inclines her head, as much to study Pan as to bid her farewell. “But whatever you choose to do, I would suggest that you refrain from doing so until we have at least resolved the next Singularity.”

“Alright…” Pan puffs out her cheeks. She looks remarkably like Oda’s niece, if only less flamboyantly dressed. And just as quickly, she’s smiling again, waving to Kagetora, bouncing off down the hall with a spring in her step.

What a strange person her Master is, and yet not strange enough to be completely beyond Kagetora’s understanding. Though knowing another’s emotions is still beyond her, there are things even she can recognize. The way a smile wavers as it stretches too far to sustain. A depthlessness of the eyes. Had that been what Pan was looking for? Could she, in her naivety, think to find it in the ever-bright eyes of the god of war?

She doesn’t know. The thing about not understanding humans- Kagetora can’t ever know. She can only guess, surmise, abandon those attempts, for guessing is no good if she can’t begin to understand anyway. She lets her wandering thoughts lead her to the room she calls her own, and there she stands. Fingers numb and motionless against the keypad. Body too heavy to dissipate into Spiritrons and pass through the door. Thinking of her Master’s smile, on the verge of collapse; her own, if it had faded in that darkness. Of a smile she has never seen save for on a face that wasn’t truly there, as a hand reached out to touch hers.

* * *

Her first week here, she gets into a dozen separate fights. A swarm of jittering automata. A team of gunmen calling themselves Hornets, just as easily swatted away, burned into nothingness. And a woman with eyes as piercingly pale as her own, smelling all at once the same and nothing like the wyverns Jeanne Alter had known. Far more ancient. A sword with power to match its age. A voice more sure of itself than any that Jeanne Alter has heard before.

“Another Alter, I see.” Her voice is even. Rings with the measured cadence of a war drum. She takes in Jeanne Alter’s frame as if it’s nothing but another curiosity, offered up by the city to be judged. Such sanctimonious eyes scream to be drowned in her flames, but it won’t work. They both already know that. A true dragon does not die by fire.

“Yeah, and what of it?” She spits back words she hopes are sharp enough to cut. “Got a problem with that? Some shit about this place not being enough for two of us?”

“Not at all.” They’re circling one another, sizing each other up. Two predators, each waiting for the other to move first. That’s what it would look like, but the truth is far more simple. Only one of them is a predator, the other merely conceited prey. “You are not even the second Alter this city has produced, Although...” The other Alter taps the point of her sword on the soot coating the rooftop they fought on. Like shaking ash off the end of a cigarette. “There is something strange about you, even for an Alter.”

A visible bristling, a baring of teeth. Jeanne Alter snaps, “What’s that supposed to mean, huh?”

The other woman scoffs. “Why are you asking me? You’re the one who will answer that, in time.”

A question for a question. How sure of herself she sounds, that smug, blonde-haired bitch. She’d sound far less confident with a sword through her chest, if only Jeanne Alter could sink it home.

“Yeah, you say that,” Jeanne Alter spits. “Whatever makes you feel better. I bet you already know what it is, you just don’t want to admit it.”

At last, a reaction. A raised brow, the city’s hundred neon lights glinting off her narrowed eyes. “Oh? Tell me, what would that be, then?”

“I’m better than you, duh.” Jeanne Alter rolls her shoulders, one after the other. Hopes the gesture is casual enough to be thought of as a careless shrug.

Silence- ringing, deafening. Thick in the air, like the bell-like peals of their clashing swords. The other Alter raises her chin, and there is Jeanne Alter’s imagination given form- the lancing of that gaze straight through her own heart. So quietly, as if to make Jeanne Alter catch her parting words on the wind, that Alter says, “So prove it.”

One backwards step over the edge of the roof, and she’s gone. Below, a familiar roar rebounds off the surrounding skyscrapers. They’re gone in mere moments: echoes, motorcycle, and rider all. They leave Jeanne Alter in their wake, purpose and anger both swelling thick through her veins. If that’s the challenge this city will give to her, she’ll accept it, surpass it, until even that cold dragon bitch will have no other choice but to acknowledge her superiority.

That was some nights ago; and here, it’s always night. The sun has never shown its face to this city, nor would it care to. The shadows that make up this place might reach up, all the way to the heavens, to swallow it up anyway.

This is the way Jeanne Alter prefers it. Memories smeared grey with ash, streaked with soot. Flames that leap between buildings and passing days, chasing after something that continues to slip through her fingers like smoke, tearing through the city as if they are as insatiable as Jeanne Alter herself-

-and in Chaldea, it is November.

* * *

The chain goes wide around Kagetora, so far from her that it couldn’t even have been said to have glanced off her protection. Of course it would take a far better attempt than that to even scratch the avatar of Bishamonten. For being the alleged weapon of the gods, this Kingu does not seem to live up to the title.

Her smile has no time to widen, her laugh no chance to escape. Before her mouth has a chance to move, another sound splits the air behind her. She knows it well, too well: the song of her spear cleaving through flesh, but her spear has yet to strike true.

Instinct collides with impulse in a freeze-frame hesitation. She shouldn’t take her eyes off the enemy, but that can only be her Master making such a pitiful sound. As the god of war, her duty is to fight; as a Servant, she must protect-

(Something about that is wrong, but what that might be is a distant thought for later-)

A flicker of red along the edges of her vision. Nobunaga’s cape, whipping with the fury of a battle that has refused to stop for Kagetora. Startling as it is, it’s also a reminder- she is not fighting here alone.

“Oda! Keep him busy!”

The crack of Nobunaga’s rifle reports her acknowledgement. Kagetora is already turned, running, spear forgotten for speed. She slides to her knees in the dust beside Pan, arms extended, but only halfway. As if she knows where Pan rests in Lupin’s grasp is already more than anything Kagetora herself can offer.

“Lupin?” Pan is saying, feeling absently in the air with the one hand not pressed hard against her face. “Lupin, is it bad?”

Lupin doesn’t answer, the stricken line of their mouth unmoving. The green glow of their healing magic is already fading from their fingers, the extent of their ability already reached. “I- I can’t… y-you’re still bleeding a bit, so… don’t touch it so much…”

“Mm, okay…” Her wrist in Lupin’s, Pan coaxes her shaking hand away from her face. Lupin’s already pale complexion goes even whiter, as if they instead of Pan are closer to becoming a ghost. All Kagetora does is stand, observe, as she’s always done; her duty- and here, her failure. All she can do is stare as Pan glances around, smile twisted by confusion, and asks, “Why is it so dark?”

The space between the three falls silent. From some distant, faraway place comes the popping of Nobunaga’s rifles, the rustling of a dozen chains. But they are nowhere near here, this tiny bubble of two Masters and one Servant, all frozen in an eerie portrait of another Singularity, so many months ago.

Stone walls around them. One of their number, clad not in a Chaldean Mystic Code but in blackened armor. Lupin crouched over her, shaking their head, saying that there’s nothing to be done. The hole not where her eye should be, but in the space over her heart, showing the gaping lack of it. Laughter, a shaky smile, as easily Pan’s as _that person’s_.

But Pan will not die. If she was dying, Kagetora would feel it. She’ll live, in spite of anything Kagetora has done. She- the anointed avatar of Bishamonten, alleged protector of humans- has failed. If she had fought harder; no, if the thrill of battle and a worthy opponent had not overwhelmed her, then maybe-

Laughter. Pan’s: crystalline, pure. Unmarred by the blood trickling down one half of her face, coating her lips, drenching her shirt. She is saying something, but her words are meant for Lupin, or else not for Kagetora: they pass by her as nothings on the breeze. The howl of her racing heartbeat rages in her head, throbs before her eyes.

Thoughtlessly, she rises. Her spear materializes in her hand, cleaving empty air as she runs towards where she knows Kingu to have stood last- but she turns, and he is gone. His white tunic flutters indistinctly between the clouds, fading rapidly from view as he retreats.

“Come back here!” The shout tears helplessly through Kagetora’s chest. She couldn’t have stopped it had she cared to. It is all she can do now that Kingu is beyond her reach. Somewhere beside her is another shot- Oda’s final attempt to bring him down, a futile one. He’s gone far past a bullet’s reach, and certainly that of a voice, but Kagetora shrieks anyway: “Come back, you coward!”

A glint of the sun obscures the details of the sky, and in that second, Kingu disappears. She is left behind in the stillness, in the hush seeping in beside the settling dust. In a world still sharp from unbridled adrenaline, unsteady beneath her feet and painful against her palm, her fingers.

Her spear. Kagetora hefts it, tilts her head to study it. So long has she thought it to be merely an extension of her, but now its very weight chafes against her hand. That should be her Master she is carrying, and not a weapon. If she is meant to protect humans, then what does it say of her, she wonders, that the moment she was most needed found her with a weapon in hand, and Kagetora hesitating to relinquish it?

They are talking, the others. Murmurs of Uruk and reaching it before an infection can set in. Things Kagetora would know nothing of, and have had no reason to concern herself with before. A protector of men, unfamiliar with even the most basic of these things, unable to strip the smile from her face even now- what does it say? That she had measured success in the bodies she’d amassed, the victories under her belt- what does it say?

And in the cart back to Uruk, riding beside her slumbering Master, with one of her eight weapons (all blades, and no shields) still in hand- is there even anything now that she could say?

* * *

Jeanne Alter stands at the highest point of her territory, surveying the countless streets below her. Each one is a conquest, its asphalt freshly blackened. Automata, gunmen, charred and forgotten: more landmarks along the borderline claimed by the Dragon Witch.

The nights now are as shapeless as her territory: wild, rampant, incongruous. One place that is hers may be taken no sooner than she’s left the immediate area, and taken back for herself with her return some hours later.

It wears on her, the walking. A Servant has only so much energy without a Master, and there is no Grail here to sustain her. The scars on her legs throb in time with her weary pulse, as if to mock her. They are not a part of her, she thinks. They are reminders of a death she was never given. False memories to be surpassed, nothing more.

So she goes on. The never-ending night spirals around her. Orange lights and orange fire. Charcoal bones and the brittle, fading sense of what is _hers_ and what she’s lost.

And for one indistinct, starless moment, the roar of an approaching motorcycle.

The Alter- _ice bitch queen_ , her internal monologue scoffs- dismounts with a toss of her hair and a hand on the hilt of her sword. She glances at Jeanne Alter, a contemptuous up and down that might, to another Alter, pass for an impartial greeting.

“You’ve been busy,” she says. Her eyes linger in places that Jeanne Alter wishes they wouldn’t. The twisted skin protruding from the bottom of her shirts. Flowing like blood along her legs, though blood would have been far preferable. A pause, poignant and clipped. Then- “Do you know where you are?”

“Does it matter?” Jeanne Alter dismisses the question with a flick of her wrist. “It’s going to be mine soon, anyway.”

“Yes, you’ve been doing quite a good job of taking territory for yourself.” Coming from the other Alter’s lips, those words sound like a dire insult. Jeanne Alter lets a hand rest on her hip, fingertips whispering towards her sword. But not yet. She won’t let such a simple provocation goad her into drawing her blade. She’s stronger than that, and better. “So much so, in fact, that you’re drawing dangerously close to mine.”

“Is that supposed to worry me?”

“Unless you wish to war with me, I would consider this your one and only warning.” The blonde Alter picks at her sleeves, adjusts her jacket- nonchalant gestures, nevertheless calculated. They are meant, they both know, to tell Jeanne Alter how little of a threat she must seem. “I wouldn’t normally deign to give you even that, but I’m in a good mood today, and you are a fellow Alter.”

“Don’t mistake me for your kind,” Jeanne Alter spits. “I’m nothing like you. Surely you can see that by now.”

“Oh, is that what this all is? A bid to assert yourself in this city?”

“And if it is? I’d say I’m doing way better than you, so shouldn’t it be me warning you to stay out of my way?”

The Alter chuckles- low, mirthless, scornful. “Do you know who I was, Alter?”

“Do I look like I give a fuck?”

“I was once called the King of Knights. Regardless of what I have become, I remain just that- a king. As a king, I must be aware of my own limitations, my shortcomings. A kingdom will only stand so long as it remains in its ruler’s dominion.”

“Blah, blah. What’s your point, ice bitch queen?”

Whoops, it slipped out. Jeanne Alter doesn’t quite regret that all, but wishes she’d saved a middle finger to go with it. The other Alter sighs, more at Jeanne Alter’s impetuousness than at her interruption. “I hold what territory I do because I know I can control it fully. You, on the other hand, go chasing after whatever catches your eye like a rabid dog. And you may run, and you may catch what you will, but will you ever be satisfied, I wonder?”

At last, the other Alter lifts her head to meet Jeanne Alter’s gaze. Chin high, mouth curved into a knowing smirk. The chill that quivers along Jeanne Alter’s spine proves the other worthy of her nickname- an ice queen indeed, driving cold slivers into Jeanne Alter’s chest, festering where an unbearable burning should be instead.

“You still think you’re better than me?” Jeanne Alter draws a hand into a fist. Fire curls closed around her fingers, as natural to her as pulling in a breath. She lets it fly before the other Alter has even finished her nod, all black and crimson fury. The hatred of her heart given shape and substance. This very fire is what her territory is built upon- and it’s shrugged off as easily as swatting a bug away.

The other Alter stares at her hand, at the space the fire had died. Her fingers flex thoughtfully, turning back to front and back again. “Weaker than before,” Jeanne Alter hears her say, as if remarking about the weather. No gloating, no disappointment. The former, at least, would’ve meant she was thought of as competition. The latter, that something had been expected of her. But nothing?

“Don’t bother.” The other Alter raises her blade now for the first time. Its point gleams at Jeanne Alter’s chest, like a second gaze boring beneath her skin. “I would defeat you easily. With you in this state, it wouldn’t even be satisfying.”

The Alter isn’t smiling, but she is. She’s there, and then she’s not- replaced, momentarily, by flowing white. A grin as empty as Jeanne Alter’s own, a spear instead of a sword. Silver steel, not blackened iron. The same weariness in her arms and legs as now, though she hadn’t been standing on her own then. There was _that person_ beside her, helping Jeanne Alter along as gently as any warrior could, saying they could fight once Jeanne Alter had recovered-

-but she hadn’t. That fight had never come. She had left the Dragon of Echigo forlorn in that narrow hall, and there had been no joy in seeing her ever-present smile threaten to crumble and fade.

Jeanne Alter blinks, paws the blurriness from her eyes. The apparition of white is gone, and with it, the other Alter. She’s down at the other end of the street, motorcycle revving up to full speed.

“Running away again?” Jeanne Alter screams to be heard over the engine. “You’d better! You’d fucking better, before-”

Before what? A rematch that she knows she’d lose?

No. That Alter was wrong. So maybe she’s ice bitch queen enough that fire alone won’t work on her. The same won’t be said for the rest of Shinjuku.

The city has burned ever since Jeanne Alter arrived, but not like this: never before, and never again since. Not with a hundred fires howling towards heaven, molten fingers of flame clinging to wooden supports and metal struts as if they were stakes. This is a death that Jeanne Alter knows nothing of, and so she paints it again and again, seeking the reality of it, never finding it. Boundary lines, territories, all forgotten. There is only the fire flowing from her hands, her sword; the inferno singing the hatred of its maker’s heart; the ash that falls from the smoke-choked sky, the wake of Jeanne Alter’s passing.

But she knows how this ends. Deep down, she’s already known. It is written into her, unlike the false burns that swirl across her body, the useless Command Spells etched into her back, marks of the failure that has plagued her since creation. She is not _Jeanne d’Arc_ ; she’s not even a satisfactory replica. She is a copy of another in a city full of them, metal bodies in the gutters and dying men in the alleyways.

When the shot strikes her down, the only surprise is how much it hurts. She is a Servant, supposedly durable, but one bullet renders her sword arm numb, and the next punctures straight through the meat of her thigh.

She runs. She’s used to it. Rampaging over France, crawling away from her creator as he bemoaned his disappointment and wished for better, charging towards his keep to wreak her revenge upon him. Running the length of a territory too big for her to patrol reliably. And now, limping from shadow to shadow. Chased from the tower at the heart of Shinjuku, far beyond the line that marks the places she calls _her own_.

In the safety of a burnt-out warehouse, Jeanne Alter patches up her wounds. Nothing a day’s rest won’t heal, but the losses she will sustain will make her wish she’d bore the pain and fought, anyway.

But maybe that’s how it should be. How it should’ve been. The other factions closing in on all sides, Jeanne Alter backed into a corner. Hadn’t it always been that way for her? For even her original self?

The city breathes on around her, and Jeanne Alter makes good her retreat from it. She rests in half-remembered dreams as lightless as her waking reality: endless hallways, a hole in her chest instead of her arm and leg, smoke stinging her eyes and making them water, though never once in the dream does she see fire, and nowhere else does the evening dew coat her than the sheen on her cheeks, awaiting her when she wakes.

* * *

Standing in the alleyway, letting her spear and the corpse of the Lahmu it’s stuck in bear her weight. Uruk no less quiet around her, but still in the wake of battle. Behind her, Siduri ushers panicked citizens out from the dead-end street, towards Ishtar’s temple. The rumblings of their many feet kick up dust, waft it over the Lahmu’s corpse. Beneath that earthen sheen- had that been a twitching? Kagetora pulls her spear back, and for the hundredth time, stabs it again.

It will not move again. She, avatar of Bishamonten, will make sure of that. It will not rise to join its brethren ransacking the city, and she will ensure their hordes join this first Lahmu in death. It is her duty, see- protect humankind, no matter the place or time. Natural. It should be natural. The comfortable heft of her spear in hand, the sway of her robes in time with the swish of her blade through the air, the smile with which she will help those weaker than herself adorning her face. It’s only right. It should be.

Even in death, the Lahmu leers up at Kagetora. Gaping jaws, lipless teeth. A tongue lolling out like some swollen slug. Motionless, it should not hurt her, but it does. Its visage an affront to everything Kagetora stands for: the smile she wishes to believe is helpful, the the humans that this creature claimed it was meant to replace.

But for all the Lahmu’s claims, those aren’t even what rouse her ire most. No, those would be its final gasping breaths, chittering with an upwelling of laughter and blood.

 _Smile_ , it said to her as it died.

What had those final twitches of its claws meant? Some futile attempt at a final strike, or an attempt to gesture at Kagetora herself? Or even neither, merely dying spasms?

It shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter, or that’s what Kagetora told herself, plunging her spear mindlessly into the Lahmu’s body. A creature the furthest thing from human couldn’t hope to say, with any authority, anything that might be true.

(Ah, but she’s not quite human, is she? She has said as much. She is Nagao Kagetora, avatar of Bishamonten, god of war. Had even a single person accepted her as anything otherwise, that would not be her name.)

She’s not like them. Kagetora flicks blood from her spear, watches it fleck and dissolve into the dry desert dirt. Monstrous though she may be, she will never be anything like these abominations. She is human in form and partly in feeling- is that not enough?

Already half-dried, the Lahmu’s blood glistens up at Kagetora, watchful. Under the blinding sun, that purplish liquid could be just as easily mistaken for clotted and darkened maroon. No difference, then, in the blood shed now and from when Kagetora had been alive. When she had been the one to coat the earth with red, and smiled as she did so.

Something scratches in the dirt behind her, close. When had she become so enveloped in thought that even the most basic awareness had abandoned her? Spear point raised, she spins- just Pan.

Her Master surveys her with her head tilted to one side. She could be glancing up at Kagetora curiously as much as trying to bring Kagetora fully into her vision, still unused to seeing with only one eye.

“Lancer,” she says, directing her gaze briefly to the ground. “Are you alright? You… really did a number on that thing, aha.”

“I am perfectly fine, Master.” Her voice comes in smooth, even tones. It would be the wind that introduces a quaver to it, if there is any to be found. “I was simply dispatching that… vile creature properly. One can never be too careful with things such as these.”

“Ah… well, I’m pretty sure it’s dead.” Pan beams at her. Cheerful, genuine. As though it has never occurred to her that Kagetora has failed in her duty, both as the avatar of Bishamonten and a Servant. A smile so bright and innocent that it astounds Kagetora still that it’s survived this long, this far. “We should go catch up with the others before they think I got lost again. Come on, Lancer.”

Kagetora falls in line behind Pan as though it’s second nature to her. This, at least, comes easily to her. She can keep her gaze on Pan’s feet as they walk, keep her senses attuned for the approach of more Lahmu. Keep her thoughts on maintaining the smile heavy on her face, one that hasn’t changed but feels all the more distorted for it, twitching at its edges like the Lahmu’s dying motions.

* * *

They are coming for her again, gunmen and automatons alike. As is usual, they will not find her. Jeanne Alter’s territory is still too expansive to be covered, top to bottom, in a single night. They’ll give up an hour or two in, and begin fighting amongst themselves to claim pieces of land, carrion birds swarming the shadows of the skyscrapers.

Some territory she’s got left. When most of it is vertical, that doesn’t say much at all. It would be easy too, from its emaciated state, for Jeanne Alter to roar out from her den and take it back in burning swathes, but she doesn’t. What would be the point in it? She’d always be fighting to keep control of it, never be able to put an end to that fighting without the whole city beneath her, and her defeat at the tower tells her that it’s impossible. Not even the ice bitch queen wants to fight her, and she of all should understand the urge that drives an Alter, that insatiable need for combat.

The urge that Jeanne Alter hasn’t felt in what must be days. Could she even be called an Alter, now? The other Alter’s scorn and the constant incursions onto her territory tell Jeanne Alter what they call her instead. Weak. But it would make sense. She’s no proper Alter, but one created. She shouldn’t have survived the Singularity where she was born, but here she is. How many others could say they can’t even die properly?

That should be funny. It should be hilarious; she should want to shriek with fire with it. She wields the flames that killed her, but never tasted them for herself- why can’t she even smile at that? Because it’s yet another mark of failure upon her, that’s why. Another thing she can only lay claim to as an imposter. Was it any wonder that the other Alter had found her flames weak, when she knows no other fuel for them than her own hatred?

In the solitude of this leaky apartment, its peeling walls and rusted pipes, Jeanne Alter curls her back against the wall and lowers her forehead against her knees. There is one thing that she hasn’t failed in yet. A promise, made months ago, that she has yet to keep. Even then, she’ll have to fight- there would be no other reason that anyone would seek Jeanne Alter out. What else could she offer that anyone else would want? Nothing- and yet, this is the one thing that she cannot hate. The thought of meeting that Servant again burns deep in her chest, but not like the anger that Jeanne Alter knows so well. It’s nothing like her rage, like her self-loathing. If those are flames, then these are embers: waiting for something else to stoke them into full force.

But that could only be that Servant. That’s why she’s here, after all, in this Singularity. Where something threatens to destabilize the Foundation of Humanity, those Chaldean Masters will show up, bringing their Servants with them. And if, on that day, she’s still alive-

Being alive wouldn’t just be enough, though. This is a city of tens, hundreds of thousands. The only way to get those Masters’ attention would be to make herself a big enough presence, like that Archer in the tower or the ice bitch queen on her noisy-ass motorcycle.

And she can’t do that holed up in a condemned building, trying to pretend it’s just her pride she’s nursing.

She has to hold on. Regain her foothold in this city, defend it with every last and bitter breath. It’s the only thing Jeanne Alter can do. However many days it’ll take, however many weeks it’ll last. However many months she can scrape by, clinging to life and the very thing she hates- hope- because there’s nothing else left to her. The only other thing to do would be to lay down and accept her defeat, her imminent death, and that she will never do.

The words she’d spoken before she was dumped out into the city have not changed- _I want to live._

She pushes herself up on wobbly legs, leaning on the banner materialized in her hand. The other clings to her a pitted blade, its tip dragging along the pockmarked concrete. She’ll go, then, to the place where she last remembers retreating from. The tap of her flag and the scrape of her sword will call her enemies to her, but let them come. Let them dash themselves upon her weapons, crumble to ash amidst the inferno that surrounds her. She’ll take their number on, however many hundreds rush to face her, each one a distraction from the ebbing ache in her chest that throbs with every heartbeat, as if the curse she’d taken in Orleans has never truly left her, nor ever fully healed.

* * *

This should not be the most tenuous her footing has ever been. Kagetora has fought in more difficult places. The narrow ledges of the Japanese mountains, the quicksand mire of a field drenched in rain and blood. The kick of Helena’s flying saucer beneath her shouldn’t make the world sway as it does.

It shifts around her, though, restless and unsteady. The only consistencies in Kagetora’s vision are the two Lahmu before her, crouched as if ready to spring. They are as motionless as her, though- wings folded, heads tilted like eerie mirror images. One leans forward, bending one spindly foreleg, laying the other flat. A reflection now of Kagetora, one hand upon the saucer to steady herself, the other upon her spear, planted firm beside her foot.

“Alike,” one Lahmu chatters at the other. “Yes.”

“Yes,” the second agrees. It bobs its head decisively, tongue lashing with the whipping of the wind. “Not made by mother. But like us.”

“I am nothing like you disgusting things,” Kagetora snaps, eyes narrowed. A handful of steps separate herself and the Lahmu. It would be easy to close the distance between them, to hurl one over the edge and deal with the other in those moments she’s alone with it. So easy, and yet her body refuses to move. She can only speak, protesting, “I am the god of war incarnate, the divine Bishamonten. I do not see even remotely how I would be anything like you.”

They’re laughing again, to themselves. Garish smiles pulsating with incomprehensible amusement. She’s reminded, for a split second, of Nobunaga cackling at a joke that Kagetora doesn’t quite catch, but knows to be at her expense. But even Nobunaga, for all her eccentricity, could never be this vile. Demon King or not, she is still human, something the Lahmu are decisively not.

“Not like us?” one Lahmu asks. It taps its claws against the top of the saucer, like one might drum their fingers over a solid surface. “You are-” It pauses, turns to the other. Their heads sway, the odd mound of flesh at the peak of what might be called a face quivering.

“Not like us!” the other agrees. “Alone. Not like us. But still a killer of men!”

Enough of this. She doesn’t know if she says the words aloud, but she feels them in every cell of her body. The next jolt spurs Kagetora into action, lunging forward, spear thrust towards one Lahmu’s torso. Its blood splatters across her face, trails from the still-curved corners of her mouth. No. No, she can’t prove them right. Can’t keep smiling like this, but she can’t stop, either. If she is to serve humanity with a smile, then she must wear it.

But that hadn’t helped either, had it? Not now, not when she was alive. Memories of her men shying away from her; even her shadow, thrown long by the torches in her camp. The way her retainers always bowed a bit too quickly, vacated her tent with the same relief that the battlefield brought Kagetora. Her brother’s words upon his sickbed, naming her a monster. In her past life, it might have been enough to say that her men avoided meeting her gaze out of respect, but there is no mistaking it here. She knows well enough the fear in the eyes of the Babylonian people below- once, it had been directed at her.

The Lahmu she speared throws its arms up, wobbling on its hind claws. The wind pulls it screeching from Kagetora’s spear, over the side of the saucer, crashing into the ground. In moments, the other is upon her, shrieking with some unearthly sound. A barrage of swipes clang off the haft of Kagetora’s spear, each sending tremors along her arms. Its teeth parting, she recognizes its screeching now: laughter, a mockery of it, as depraved as the creature making it. No, more than that- the clumsy swings not meant for the joints of a Lahmu’s arms, this dogged and relentless assault. It is mocking her.

“Do you think this is amusing?” Kagetora’s snarl rattles through her teeth. The Lahmu doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t need it to. She’s asking because she must; because the alternative would be to accept that she knows why the Lahmu is laughing. Because it’s fun, because it sees that which she’d tried to veil from humanity with benevolence and the name of a god. This is _fun_ , and they both think it so. There’s a thrill that can only be found in a place where death is but the swing of a blade away, and it was not righteous duty that brought Kagetora there, but her own attempts to fill the emptiness within her chest.

By itself, the other Lahmu doesn’t last long. Its flailings are easily batted aside and its body skewered like the first. It doesn’t struggle, doesn’t say anything- just chitters with endless laughter until its twitching slows, then stills.

The Lahmu are dead. She should be returning to her Master now. Should, as she should have helped humanity with a smile, as that smile should have been anything but empty.

Footsteps beside her. Light, human, familiar- boots on metal. Nobunaga sidles up to Kagetora, eyeing the dead Lahmu with pursed lips. “In one piece this time, war god?” she asks. “Thought you were all about making sure these things weren’t in any condition to be getting an open casket.”

More of Nobunaga’s nonsense. Usually, she’s so quick to dismiss it- where are her cutting replies? Kagetora’s mouth stays perfectly frozen- a portrait of the deity she is supposed to be. This pause is far too unusual, too long for her, but how could Nobunaga know that? Nobunaga does not understand her. Let her think that it’s Kagetora making a point, letting the question linger in uncomfortable silence before she answers: “I struck it a killing blow. Given that we will likely have to engage in further combat when we return to Uruk, I see no use in wasting me energy here.”

“Alright, suit yourself.” Nobunaga shrugs, begins to amble away, off the edge of the saucer and back to her own Master. They are a blur of purple soon joined by Nobunaga’s red, two striking figures against the stream of Uruk’s surviving citizens.

The battle is won, Kagetora tells herself. The dead can be counted upon her fingers, and the Foundation of Humanity remains intact. Even as Helena’s saucer begins to lower itself to the ground, as those citizens of Uruk who pass it give Kagetora admiring looks, that void in her chest is no closer to being full. But she’s done her duty- protected them, satisfied her own love of combat. This is, has always been, her purpose.

So why then does it feel so empty?

Stumbling off the saucer, Kagetora lets the point of her spear drag along in the dirt. There’s heat welling up in her chest now. Not tears- the god of war does not cry. It threatens to spill from her, from her lips, that ringing sound the Lahmu had tried to mimic. It’s all she can do now, she realizes, all she knows how to do. She laughs because there is nothing else left to her, none of those feelings she always strove to understand. Just the sound pressed against the insides of her teeth, tight in her throat and wrapped close around her heart, like the dying cries of the Lahmu left laying in the dust.

* * *

In the end, even a Servant is but a single person. No amount of fire or destruction can stem the stream of intruders once they’ve scented blood, and Jeanne Alter has given them far more than that. So many days spent absent from her territory speak of weakness to be exploited, and a dwindling fear that can no longer protect her.

From the rooftop of an old apartment block, Jeanne Alter surveys the patch of darkened buildings beneath her: the last of her territory, the dredges that no one wanted to take. Even then, they’ve begun to dwindle. No point in letting an enemy retain a foothold, even if it’s only charred buildings and a place hidden enough to lay her head. She shouldn’t be out in the open like this; she knows, but how else is anyone going to find her? Anyway, the person she wishes to speak to isn’t the type for underhanded assassination.

Jeanne Alter isn’t waiting long. The revving of an approaching motorcycle engine is soon replaced with the tap of boots against the concrete behind her. The other Alter- a Saber, she’s learned by now- remains by the stairwell, leaning against it, a plastic-wrapped pastry in hand. She wastes no time with pleasantries, saying only, “So what is it you wished to speak to me about?”

Had these circumstances been any different, maybe Jeanne Alter would’ve bristled at her directness. Now, she only lifts a weary shoulder and replies, “Simple. You, me, non-aggression pact. A truce of sorts.”

The blackened Saber lifts an eyebrow, slowly chewing a bite of pastry. Her expression remains unchanged, but it’s clear. It’s not the taste of the food she’s savoring, but the silence, Jeanne Alter’s obvious discomfort. She scoffs, “I don’t see why that would be necessary. I’m not interested in gaining any more territory than I already hold, much less…” An arm flung at the burnt-out city below. “And I hardly see you as a threat in your current state.”

“If you don’t want what I’m offering, then we can fight it out here and now.” Jeanne Alter is on her feet in a flash, sword called into her hand. “I don’t give a fuck about your dumbass king roleplay or whatever, I’ll burn you where you stand.”

Another bite, chewed slower. “No, I don’t think you will,” the Saber says. “It’d be a waste of your energy, my energy, and this.” She hefts the pastry to a wrinkling of Jeanne Alter’s nose.

“The fuck is that, anyway?”

“Pork bun. Don’t tell me you’re unfamiliar with even this sort of thing.”

Teeth gritted, blood churning, Jeanne Alter strides towards the Saber. See how the ice bitch queen likes her food when it’s been dashed onto the floor. Freezes, stock still, hand only half upraised. A memory: a Master and a crackling campfire, an offer of bread and meat. And the Servant who had stayed up to keep watch; that same Master’s Servant, tailing Jeanne Alter as she’d been told to do- but surely that order is long done, and wouldn’t think to look for her, if she even knew she could.

“Hm?” The Saber’s eyes travel between the bun and Jeanne Alter’s hand, locked in the space between them. “Oh, do you want one? You can’t have it. They’re easy to find, though. Those convenience stores with the blue banners have plenty.”

“The fuck do you think I am?” Jeanne Alter snarls, jerking her hand back. “I wouldn’t fuckin’ eat anything _you_ find pleasant, ice bitch queen.”

“Is that how you intent to address me from now on, mad dog?”

“Suits you, doesn’t it? Don’t dodge the fucking question. Truce, yes or no?”

The Saber lifts the bun to her mouth again, takes a bite. Her eyes don’t leave Jeanne Alter’s as she chews, swallows. Finally: “I see no reason to,” she says, voice mellow. “If only to spare you the embarrassment of being utterly defeated by another of your kind.”

“Oh fuck off, you-”

“I would almost feel bad about it, too.” The Saber polishes off the last of the bun, crumpling the wrapper and tucking it into her pocket. “You seem different now. Like you’ve finally found your resolve.”

Jeanne Alter’s only response is a middle finger, raised boldly in the Saber’s direction. “I said fuck off, yeah?” she scowls. “Conversation’s over. Done. Bye. Good riddance. Go fuck yourself.”

To this, the Saber shows no reaction- merely the slightest shake of her head, a contemptuous snort. She does not leave right away, though. Just stares. “A word of warning before I depart,” she adds. “Something new has surfaced in this city. A beast, more truly suited to the title of ‘mad dog’ than yourself.”

“Wow, thanks for the bulletin, not.” Jeanne Alter narrows her eyes. “Why the hell are you telling me, anyway? Wouldn’t it be funnier to you if I got torn to bits by whatever that thing is?”

“Perhaps,” says the Saber. “Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t bother telling you at all. But you seem to be waiting for something, or someone who wasn’t me, and it’d be a shame before you encountered whatever that is you’re looking for. That’s all.”

“You-” Truce or not, there’s no suppressing what comes instinctually to Jeanne Alter. A ball of flame envelops her fist, and a moment later it’s sailing at the Saber’s head. Just as before, it’s brushed off with a swing of the Saber’s hand, golden eyes snapping sharply to Jeanne Alter’s face.

No animosity shines in her fierce stare, though- only the briefest twinkle that might have been something close to approval. “Finally, it feels like you mean it.”

And before Jeanne Alter can respond, the Saber steps back into the stairwell, retreating into the shadows. Another moment, and the rumble of a motorcycle announces her departure back into the city proper, red tail lights lost amidst the blur of yellows and oranges.

Jeanne Alter trudges back over to the edge of the roof, plops herself down upon it. “Stupid ice bitch queen,” she murmurs beneath her breath- all bluster, no venom. “What does it fucking matter if I’m waiting or not? It won’t mean shit, will it? Can’t keep running from Singularity to Singularity hoping I don’t get erased.” Her sword gone, her fist closes in tight around itself, shaking with unnecessary force. “I’m not a proper Heroic Spirit. That hasn’t changed. And it won’t, so what’s the goddamn point-”

A rough exhale, sighed out into the stale air around her. “The fuck am I talking to myself for anyway?” she mumbles, gaze blurring over soot-smeared rooftops and charred concrete. “That won’t do shit. I have to just-”

Tired legs carry her down the stairs. Trembling arms lift her sword and banner, channel worn fire into the air around her. She is but one Servant, but she can still hold off the countless humans and machines that encroach upon her boundaries. She can, and it’s the only thing she can do. The only thing she knows how to do. The only thing that will let her forget the tremor in her hand, the scars reappearing and creeping along her skin, the void in her chest from which her fire flows in endless, anguished streams.

* * *

Back in Chaldea, the walls blur into a train of endless white. The halls are empty, the Masters resting in the handful of hours they have until Solomon’s temple makes contact with Chaldea itself.

It should be her steps that ring endlessly in her ears, but they don’t. Nobunaga’s words make up the buzzing in her head, meaningless blather that just won’t leave her no matter how hard she tries to shake it. That it’s better than endless visions of the Lahmu smiling doesn’t make it any easier to bear.

_It’d be a shame if you died here, Kenshin. After all, you still have that promise to keep, don’t you?_

What would Nobunaga know of keeping promises? Of Servants not touched by the Throne of Heroes? It was a foolish promise she’d made back in Orleans, one spurred by the prospect of someone who could finally give her a good fight. But leave it to Nobunaga to rub salt in a wound for the sake of pettiness- yes, that’s something perfectly befitting the Demon King.

(But the Sakura Saber? Where Nobunaga throws her words as wide and quickly as her bullets, Okita keeps her observations to the realm of the practical. She’s nowhere near as eccentric as Nobunaga, and so- that she’d echoed Nobunaga’s words-)

They’re wrong. That’s the easiest answer to accept. The most reasonable one. Ignoring Nobunaga’s blather is one thing, but the Sakura Saber- she knows of Kagetora only what history told her, hasn’t been on the battlefield beside her at all. So there’s more than enough room for her to err. Yes, that’s it. So simple. Kagetora does not _like_ the Dragon Witch, and it’s simply Nobunaga’s bad influence upon Okita that makes her think it to be so.

She had _enjoyed_ Jeanne Alter’s company, found her less annoying than the others; she was nowhere as naively innocent as the Master who has still not yet seen Kagetora as anything other than human, and yet Jeanne Alter too had stayed near her. That, Kagetora appreciates. That doesn’t mean she _liked_ it.

There is a reason for that, too. Being near a person for all of two weeks gives you nothing of their true nature- merely a glimpse, if that. Enough time, and Jeanne Alter would surely have grown unnerved by her smile, like everyone else in the past. Thought of her less as _Kenshit_ and more as _Bitchamonten_ , god of war, or else distant protector of humanity. Different- because that is all she is, the name _Nagao Kagetora_ the sole part of her that remains close to human.

Shaking her head, Kagetora walks on. There’s no use traversing this line of thought. No use in considering how she might be seen by someone she won’t meet again.

But for the briefest amount of time, those days she cannot so easily be rid of, there had been something there. An anomaly among Servants, among what Kagetora had thought to be true. Someone who saw her as neither god nor monster, but as a rival.

Something is wrong. The cadence of her footsteps is slowing, stuttering. Like her heartbeat, her thoughts, which linger, refusing to move past this certain point: that such a person might never exist again.

She is staggering, stopping. The wall cool against her fingertips, steel reassurance that for once does not come from a weapon. Her feet too heavy to move, bound by the same pressure that clenches at her chest. And the silence, disintegrating, helpless laughter rolling free from her, unable to be contained. No longer needing to be contained, now that they’re free of Babylonia. And now that it’s loose, she hears it: that hollowness within her, torn free and released into the air, and all Kagetora can do is let it hang there. The god of war, powerless for once, and grateful that no one sees it.

**Author's Note:**

> "Xai this fic reads weird" yes I did use a different style for it. Am I satisfied with it? Eh. It works for what was needed. 
> 
> Not gonna lie I feel weird about posting stuff that has OCs but then I see everyone else posting OC/Servant or OC/Master content so what I'm saying is maybe I'll post my extensive Olga/OC yuri collection because god is that tag more barren than Cosmos in the Lostbelt earth.


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